


Exorcism

by eyeballboba



Category: Deltarune (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29475651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyeballboba/pseuds/eyeballboba
Summary: An enemy that can see all of your moves.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Exorcism

Kris can see every one of Susie’s chalk-dusted teeth. Their mouth parts as if to scream, just as they can’t stop looking, but Kris chokes the air out of their throat and nothing comes out. 

Their fingers are shaking. Their pencil is jabbing into their side from their pocket. Maybe if they could see something other than Susie in front of them, they would pound their fist against the rattly metal lockers, and Alphys’s door would burst open at the noise. Kris is too afraid, with their feet off the ground and Susie in their face, and doesn't. 

Susie lets Kris go and as they walk, they think. The beautiful day outside shines through the windows. It’s bright, the light casting a ghostly imprint of the windows on the walls. The storage closet, though, is set into the wall where the closest windows are ten feet away on either side. It’s dark. 

Their heart pounds from nerves that haven’t settled. 

The closet door is unfinished, and no one bothered to finish it. That’s why the frame around it is dark- unpainted, and the door so thick. It was from when the building was older, and not a school. It may have been important then, but with the open space separated into classrooms with the interior walls built after the existing ones, it was now just a storage closet. 

Susie hesitates in front of the door.

Why was it built so far from the windows? Maybe it was used to store dark room photography. Rooms that let photographs develop needed to be so dark that it felt like the darkness was looming, stretching from the walls. 

Kris hesitates too, but when it’s clear that Susie won’t take the first step alone, they steel their nerves and go with her. 

As Kris falls, blood rushes to their head, and their vision swims dizzily. Maybe it’s not the first fall they’ve had, but getting up sure isn’t any easier. In the dark though… everything seems a little clearer, even with the pain. 

The houses they move past poke out of the ground like curled bits of notebook paper. It feels safe, strangely enough. Ralsei is so kind and warm it’s like meeting an old friend, and they’re happy to go along with what Ralsei wants. 

They were scared for a brief moment, seeing the dark, looming hallways of Ralsei’s old castle. But Ralsei was confident even as they dragged their feet, and the halls were empty of any monsters other than them. Their soul gave a little flutter when they saw Ralsei’s training dummy, a lonely boy in a lonely castle, and suddenly they felt a lot less afraid and thought of how small the place would seem with no one else in it. 

Ralsei smiles a little at their hug. They smile back and nod eagerly to his speech of how he should treat the monsters kindly, and they think a little vacantly that they wouldn’t even try anything else. 

By the time they reach the first town, Kris has collapsed from exhaustion more than once, with Ralsei’s magic bringing them back up. Once, they go so far they can see tendrils of darkness warping the edges of their vision, and push back as hard as they can. Their eyes open and they’re back a good hundred feet, but they haven’t given up. 

It’s when they reach into their pockets to pay for one of the sticky clothes Seam sells when their hand brushes against something metal. That’s right… they did always have it on them. It was… Toriel would freak out to know that they’d lost it. 

Kris reaches past the phone and hands a stack of magic-minted coins to Seam. Ralsei and them laugh as they each try on the amber card, a piece of armor made from some orangeish paper made form fitting with tree sap. They end up giving it to Ralsei, no, “I got the ribbon”. 

As Ralsei peels and sticks the card to himself, they duck behind a tree and pull out their phone. It’s scratched and old, an oddly familiar weight. Their finger hovers over the screen for a bit, and then they open the contacts and tap on the only one, Toriel. 

The ringer buzzes, then hums. When it doesn’t stop they drop it and wrap their arms around themselves, feeling suddenly cold. 

They look up-- the sky is still an unnatural shade.

That’s probably why. There’s no reception here. 

It’s a dark world, not an underground one.

A betraying thought enters their mind, what if the legend what if Ralsei what if lying about going home but they shake it off. Kris reminds themself, there’s no reason they should think that. 

With every step they take, the chill’s grasp weakens. Their determination sets in with Ralsei by their side, and later, Susie and Lancer.

The dark world is fixed and they promise Susie to come back tomorrow. 

They kind of want to stay, they’re not even tired. But, they think, they haven’t seen the monsters in a while either, and after the locked door stays locked they still have something to do. 

That’s what did it, Kris thinks. They’re not, nothing is the same. Who’s Alphys? Don’t they know? They shouldn’t hate each other! Couldn’t they remember that, that they  **saved** them? 

Weren’t monsters supposed to be made of love and hope and compassion?

Everything is so tiring, so wrong. Kris follows their feet back home. They smile at Toriel, even with a nagging voice at the back of their head telling them how she’s different. Their bed is welcoming just as a thought. 

Yeah… when they wake up, it’ll be a little better if not fixed. They’re friends, after all that determination. A pencil pokes them in the side and they yank it and the junk out of their pockets with a groan. Things shouldn’t be so, so  _ normal _ . Monsters aren’t normal. 

They pull up the covers and go to sleep. 

Kris wakes up.


End file.
